Wonderful article! We had a butternut tree in our backyard in Greene, NY. I know well how impossible it is to separate the nut from the shell. I think what the Indians and early settlers did was crush the entire nut, shell and all, and boiled them up. The meat and oil turned into a kind of mush and the hard shells could be picked out from the mush. They are tasty nuts! Consider how difficult it was for the Hudenosaunee to do this before metal pots were available. The would have used clay pots, and I wonder how well their pots worked over an open fire. Perhaps they scooped out logs into which they poured the sap and then put in stones heated in a fire to make the liquid boil. I have often pondered this dilemma when people talk about the Haudenosaunee making maple syrup. I didn't know about butternut syrup, now I want to try it! Maple syrup is a 40:1 ratio, in other words it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. It takes ALL DAY LONG to make syrup, 12 solid hours of boiling. My guess is early people never made what we consider "syrup", but perhaps were happy with a slightly sweet much more watery liquid. I think they also collected sap and let it freeze overnight, then removed the top layer of ice in the morning (which is mostly frozen water), and concentrated the liquid that way.
Makes sense, Valerie. I bet there is much more information available out there on this, but not on line, or easily searchable. I like your suppositions, I bet you are correct on all accounts. There's always so much more to learn about places we existed in and took for granted. Thanks for your insight!
We had a big butternut tree in our back yard and remember my brother Scott playing in his sandbox under the butternut tree. My mom would collect the butternuts and after drying them out we would try to Crack them. Not an easy task. Suzanne, you always bring such good memories in your articles❤️❤️
Very nice article, thanks for putting it together. The Morris land grant is a bit inflated when you call it half the county. Otsego County has just over 1,000 square miles. 32,000 acres is very close to 50 square miles -- which is 1/20 of the area of the the county, not 1/2.
Wonderful article! We had a butternut tree in our backyard in Greene, NY. I know well how impossible it is to separate the nut from the shell. I think what the Indians and early settlers did was crush the entire nut, shell and all, and boiled them up. The meat and oil turned into a kind of mush and the hard shells could be picked out from the mush. They are tasty nuts! Consider how difficult it was for the Hudenosaunee to do this before metal pots were available. The would have used clay pots, and I wonder how well their pots worked over an open fire. Perhaps they scooped out logs into which they poured the sap and then put in stones heated in a fire to make the liquid boil. I have often pondered this dilemma when people talk about the Haudenosaunee making maple syrup. I didn't know about butternut syrup, now I want to try it! Maple syrup is a 40:1 ratio, in other words it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. It takes ALL DAY LONG to make syrup, 12 solid hours of boiling. My guess is early people never made what we consider "syrup", but perhaps were happy with a slightly sweet much more watery liquid. I think they also collected sap and let it freeze overnight, then removed the top layer of ice in the morning (which is mostly frozen water), and concentrated the liquid that way.
Makes sense, Valerie. I bet there is much more information available out there on this, but not on line, or easily searchable. I like your suppositions, I bet you are correct on all accounts. There's always so much more to learn about places we existed in and took for granted. Thanks for your insight!
We had a big butternut tree in our back yard and remember my brother Scott playing in his sandbox under the butternut tree. My mom would collect the butternuts and after drying them out we would try to Crack them. Not an easy task. Suzanne, you always bring such good memories in your articles❤️❤️
Based on your picture above, a very majestic tree it would seem.
Very nice article, thanks for putting it together. The Morris land grant is a bit inflated when you call it half the county. Otsego County has just over 1,000 square miles. 32,000 acres is very close to 50 square miles -- which is 1/20 of the area of the the county, not 1/2.